#some of you are too old to lack this much media literacy

[soursfilms]

@ portwells, if you for a second even think that mack and gina could be serious you’re just plain dumb, i’m sorry. this is the only way i can articulate it at this point. this is the last season. i’m gonna need you to be so serious right now and use the brain that the lord gave you for once. both mack and dani are clear plot devices to add drama for rina, that’s it. they’re guest stars! and if you actually read interviews and articles, and reviews from screeners who watched the episodes early, you’d know that plot ends mid season. (woops spoiler but idgaf!) most of the stills of them are from the literal hsm4 movie they’re filming and he’s her childhood crush. i can promise you, gina, nor no one in real life is gonna end up with their childhood crush. (sorry to crush your dreams, but you will in fact not marry any one direction member that you had hanging up on a poster on your wall, and funny enough, gina has literal ¡placemats! with mack’s face on it if you look at the dinner table still because gina and her mom were fans of his show. a show in which ricky took the theme song of to write a song for gina and was released as a sneak peak already. extremely unserious all around)

portwells want to cling unto them because they’re bitter, as if we can’t see right through you. i wonder if y’all have ever watched an actual teen drama show in your life. clearly y’all haven’t and apparently haven’t seen interviews with the actual creator of the show speaking about the plot lines about HIS story, because if you did you would not be hitting post on your absurd takes. (not to mention, gina and ricky are clearly in love with each other. that’s something you all need to make peace with. especially if you claim to like gina, just accept it and be happy for her that she’s happy even if you don’t necessarily are a fan. he’s the guy she wants and you cannot change that.)

also, saw someone say ej and ricky being older means they’re both in different life stages than her so they wouldn’t work out?? (first, you don’t even know how old mack is. so i know you feel very stupid right now) and that’s not the same and you know it. gina still had TWO years to go in high school compared to ej, and she tried to make a future with him (those are her words) but it didn’t work out because it was not meant to be. mentally they were in different places. ricky and gina are only a year apart and closer in mindsets, and there’s actual love between them, that they will fight for (in the words of can i have this dance which they sang as a #real ship does “what we have is worth fighting for”) you cannot compare the writing of rina to portwell. one is clearly developed and well written and favored by the writer of the show, while the other was a plot device….let’s stop being bitter and just be at peace with the story the creator wanted to create. if you don’t like it just do not watch.

[alwaysalir]

I swear some of y’all lack media literacy. Yes Daemon was less intense because he’s quite literally lost his fire. He lost his spot as heir. His brother continually treated him like crap, his one hope to contribute to his house was through a marriage to Rheanyra but he lost that too. In episode 6 even Laena comments about how Daemon has lost his way. He is aimless. He lacks purpose and he doesn’t think he will ever get it back. He has zero want to be back in the game as we see Viserys offer him a spot at court which Daemon turns down.

When Rheanyra & Daemon are walking on the beach the first real spark you see from Daemon is when she is talking about how miserable she’s been and insinuates that his life has been so much better. It hasn’t. You can see his vulnerability as Rheanyra is handing him everything he wanted all those years ago. The sex scene is tender and careful because this is a choice they are making together. They are choosing each other after years of being unable to do that. It’s not fueled by lust but something deeper.

After the confrontation when Rheanyra proposes the idea of marriage Daemon is surprised. He’s even more surprised that she’s willing to commit crimes to make it happen. The interesting thing she is offering him a place in her court as Prince Consort much like Viserys. The difference is Rheanyra is saying she needs him. In that moment he sees he can actually contribute something. He can help her strengthen her claim and become a stronger Queen. And just like Daemon is reborn. We see the old menace return as he plots & murders. Then when we see him at the wedding he has a new life in him. Gone is the aimless shell he was at the beginning of the episode.

[galedekarios]

I'm not sure if you've seen this going around, but apparently after the new patch, there are people going super pro Gale and Mystra getting back together and acting like she didn't abuse him??? And the worst part is people claiming the player is just who he settles for because Mystra won't take him back and he'll never love the player as much and. I'm going to have an aneurysm. The way I'm suddenly seeing people blaming GALE and calling MYSTRA a victim. Please keep in mind, he can only go back to Elysium if he is the players avatar. And they're saying this is the best ending for him and he was never abused.

I'm so sorry for this rant but I'm SO aggravated by this and I just know if this was a certain other character then this would get people torn to shreds. I'm tired.

don't worry, anon. you can always vent in my inbox. 🖤

as to your ask:

i did see the new added effects and animations to the ending. the ending for origin gale had existed prior to patch 6 already, but they expanded on it with vfx.

my opinion on this personally is:

overall, this changes nothing for me about how deeply imbalanced and terrible their relationship is, nor does it change what mystra did to him, or how she conducts herself within the context of game canon, the decisions she makes and the things she says.

larian can add as many purple sparkles as they want to it - make them heart-shaped next them, too. it changes nothing.

It doesn’t change the fact that she is a goddess. a goddess who sent her chosen to him at 8 years old and made him her lover at some point in time after that. it doesn't change the fact that she was his teacher first, then his mentor, and then changed that intrinsically already imbalanced relationship (which is not even touching on the divine aspect) into that of lovers. it doesn't change the history she has had with her other chosen and what she did to them.

it's an ending that is viscerally uncomfortable to watch in this context and to me, it’s an abuser regaining power over their victim. a victim who, by the end of the game, still hasn't fully realised what has happened to him. the player can set companion gale on the path to it, and some things he comes to see, but there's a lot of healing still left to do.

i also want to add that what people claim doesn't really matter to me in this context, especially if it's what you outlined. so many reads and takes of gale show a complete lack of reading and listening comprehension and general media literacy. a shiny 'new' cutscene tends to do that, too. it happened before when patch 5 and the epilogue released.

i do feel you on being tired though. they fumbled gale's storyline in act iii and it results in a complete 180 from act i and ii. this only adds to it.

other posts than mine have detailed it far better. i don't have to spoons at the moment to rehash it all, but i would recommend reading @messiahzzz's post on gale and mystra's relationship as well as this one here. i also have a post on mystra, elminster, raphael and gale with info from the epilogue here.

[adachimoe]

Random tidbits from Hashino's interview in the Persona Club P4 book

At the back of the Persona Club P4 fanbook, there's a 6 page interview with Katsura Hashino about the making of Persona 4. This interview is spoilerific and you have to cut the pages of the book to even read it lol. I have 0 desire to translate the entire thing (I don't trust myself with that, ngl), but here are some fun highlights from it related to Adachi. This interview/book was published in 2009, so before the anime aired, before Golden, before Arena, etc.

The identity of the true culprit - who filled Adachi's role before Adachi?

While developing the story, it originally had Izanami (Hashino very specifically mentions Izanami was planned since the start) and Namatame, and one of the themes was "how the characters get info". From what Hashino says, Namatame's role during this earlier stage in development sounds very similar to what we got in-game. Back then, he was considered the true culprit and he was well-meaning, but he lacked some pretty critical info. After Namatame, there would be the feeling that there was still someone out there, but that someone was Izanami, not Adachi.

The staff felt the plot was lacking, so they wanted to add in a stepping stone between Namatame and Izanami as an extra plot twist - a true, true culprit. And the first character who they considered for the role of the true culprit was................... not Adachi.

The very first candidate for the true culprit was Yukiko. Yup. This came from a half-serious, half-joking convo between Hashino and Soejima. Their reasoning for picking Yukiko was because in the Kindaichi Case Files, whenever there's a murder in the sticks, it's always the lady who runs the ryokan who's the culprit.

The next person who they considered was.......... Yosuke. They thought that because of how his character was shown as a decision maker with a good head on his shoulders, maybe he'd have a relatable reason for devising everything? They talked about making him a villain who would still be adored by players regardless. But Hashino was against the idea of having one of friend group as the culprit.

Ultimately, the reason why neither Yukiko nor Yosuke became the culprit was because their motives for murder would be too personal. Hashino thought that if it's murder driven by personal motive, then players won't be as invested. A personal motive would be too much like the "Tuesday Mystery Theater", a Japanese mystery TV show that was - from my understanding - character driven drama.

Hashino went back to the theme of "how the characters get info". At the time, there existed a person in the plot who's function in the game was to give the main cast information from the police's side. This character just so happened to give you info, and seemingly consequence free on their part - after all, what you did with the info after had nothing to do with them. They were careless. And Hashino followed this train of thought, thinking that kind of carelessness went well with antagonism.

Originally, Adachi was the aforementioned character. He was not the culprit, and he gave the characters info about the police's investigation. Following Hashino's train of thought, then the person who was giving away information would become this new culprit between Namatame and Izanami.

But there was an issue - if he was giving the main cast info about the investigation, then he would stand out among the adult cast, and him standing out might spoil that he's the true culprit. Thus, Hashino changed directions during development and started to create Adachi's character.

(See bottom of this post for a footnote about Adachi's old character design and some ramblings about his old role.)

The Thousand Curses and the Myriad Truths

Per Hashino, Persona 4 is about media literacy (no seriously it says media literacy in katakana wasei-eigo even). Izanami's Thousand Curses represents the lies of the media that humans believe in. The protagonist's Myriad Truths represents how, in this sea of misinformation and lies, you can only trust and believe in the words of those who are close to you.

(I suppose now is a good time to mention that the Japanese name for Myriad Truths is "Tens of Thousands of [Mantras / True Words]". A mantra is a phrase/word you repeat over and over, so it seems the Myriad Truths is a visualization of the protagonist unleashing all of the truths from his social links and bonds. All 10,000+ of them.)

Adachi's Given Name

Adachi's given name was not always Tohru. At first, it was Tamotsu, which is written 保. Hashino changed it to Tohru because the character for Tamotsu 保 could also be read Yasu when used as a name, and at the time, the staff was trying not to spoil who the culprit was.

Why would Tamotsu / Yasu spoil the game, though? Because "Yasu did it!" is an old ancient ur-spoiler meme thing from the 1983 adventure game the Portopia Serial Murders. Think of like... "soylent green is people", "Darth Vader is Luke's father", "Sephiroth kills Aerith", etc. Not only that, but the main character of Portopia is a detective, and Yasu is your buddy cop sidekick.

Hashino was already aware of the Yasu comparisons because one of the staff who read the script reacted by going, "So Yasu did it, huh?" But Hashino thought that Portopia was so damn old that gamers wouldn't know about it. Only turbo nerds working at Atlus know Portopia, right?

Wrong lmao turns out a shit ton of people knew about the Portopia spoiler. After character art of Adachi was released in a magazine promo for Persona 4, people reacted with, "Yasu did it", so Hashino very quickly changed Adachi's given name.

They had already recorded the audio for the game at this point, which included a line of Adachi saying, "I'm Tamotsu Adachi" when he introduces himself. Hashino had the audio team cut out him saying "Tamotsu", and this is why Adachi says, "I'm Adachi" and not "I'm Tohru Adachi" in April.

I'm sure there's an alternate universe where his name stayed Tamotsu and in that universe I am instead blogging about how you can read it as "Yasu" while explaining the Portopia Serial Murders. :')

Footnote Commentary

If you're familiar with the Persona 4 Design Works, Adachi's page mentions that originally during development, he wasn't the culprit but rather a misdirect. After his role in the story was revised to be the true culprit, Adachi's design was also revamped to be the design we know of today. But this red haired design was his original design back when he was apparently just a leaky faucet. I suppose since we know his name used to be Tamotsu, we can call this version of him "Tamotsu" lol.

Hashino doesn't really go into what he meant by "create Adachi's character", but I'm assuming since the Adachi character already existed in the plot, he meant like... "re-create" the character to fit this new role as the true culprit with this consideration about how he'd come off in the plot.

Hearing that the character originally gave you legit info about the police investigation is interesting, cause in the Design Works, opposite this page of Adachi's old design, Soejima also mentions that Adachi was originally a red herring. I can see how those go hand in hand - a guy feeding you accurate info? How would that not be suspicious?

I also get the impression that Hashino is indirectly saying that the Adachi we got in-game also feeds you bullshit, as to make him seem *less* suspicious, if him giving you legit info would make him more suspicious. Which, well, considering the first thing he says is, "Yukiko did it!" ...Hmm yeah okay lol.

I was pretty amused to see that Yukiko and Yosuke were names being tossed around to be the true culprit. Wild to see that the ancient internet rumors are actually true. Notably, Dojima is still not true. Very funny to read that the real origin was some partially nonsense convo between Soejima and Hashino where they're like, "Hey, so, about the Kindaichi Case Files."

The real moral of the story here is that Adachi is truly no one's first choice. Even his role as the true culprit was originally just a confused Namatame.

[franzkafkagf]

Just a little disclaimer I’m not asking this question to try to come across as hurtful or anything like that. But I was wondering how as an Aegon-stan his treatment of women can make you have a very nuanced opinion of him? :o

- Personally I’m TB but do have empathy for some TG-characters. I do like Aegon as an antagonist and I do feel for his very toxic and harmful upbringing but due to his violent behavior towards women.. I just can’t really connect that well with him 🫣

Hi! Thank you for your ask :) Super interesting question actually! I have written some things for him in the past, talking about what exactly fascinated me about his character so much ( exhibit one, two three, four and five )

I also urge you to listen to Tom talk about Aegon; this man gets him as a character so well and says it better than I ever could. Some interviews found here, here and here

I can understand not being able to connect with him because of his treatment of Dyana— it's an unforgiveable thing he has done to her and might have done to others. But in spite of that, he is still just a character. Everything he does is meant to inform us about his certain traits he has, even the ugliest of things.

What does it tell us about Aegon? He is entitled, doesn't take things seriously, he is indulgent and does not see Dyana (or other smallfolk for that matter) as a real person (succession reference wink wink)

I wouldn't call his behavior towards women in general toxic though— I actually think he is somewhat demure when faced with women like his mother, Rhaenyra and also Helaena. He seems to kick down most of the time, while trying to get recognition from the ones he sees as peers or above him.

If you look at the culture he was raised in, it's not really a surprise he turned out the way he did, seeing women beneath him as something he can just take if he likes to. Westeros is cartoonishly misogynistic; traditions like First Night or the prevelance of brothels filled with women working under harsh indentures show that.

Young men of noble origin seem to see visits to brothels (again, filled with women that do not want to be there) as a normal past time activity; it's so prevalent that it's surprising if a young nobleman does not participate. Now, I do not want to excuse his actions, but seeing the culture he grew up him and the influences around him? -> He probably thinks this is normal behaviour, disturbingly.

On a bit different note, I want to talk about his relationships. A thought I see often echoed in the fandom is the headcanon that Aegon is violent towards Helaena when that... was never stated anywhere? Now I'm probably biased because I'm a big Helaegon girl but I don't see him being violent with his sister.

People say he impregnated her at 13 when.. he was also just a 15 year old boy? He did not want to marry her! Both literally did not and could not consent to what happened to them, I think it's so sad that people try to demonize a child who just did what was demanded from him from all the adults in his life :(

(like yes tell me about how one of these KIDS forced himself on the other out of fully selfish desire and pure evil. you're so smart and do not lack media literacy whatsoever)

The dinner scene literally shows Helaena laugh at Aegon's antics until he goes a step too far w Baela, and what does Helaena do? She clowns him in front of everyone with her toast. And what does he do? He just takes it... not the behaviour of an evil abusive man but the delulus will swear otherwise.

People will also try to twist her crying at the coronation as some depressive moment for her where she realizes that he will have the ultimate power over her when that's LITERALLY just a (very boring) headcanon. It's hinted at in the text and literally written out in the script that she is scared, because she knows what crowning him means; the dance cannot be stopped. That's all, that's why she's crying. She feels like their end is near.

All in all I think no one can change your mind on how you feel about Aegon; what he did IS unforgivable, but I hope you see a bit of my pov here too. Seeing the nuance in deeply flawed characters and digging to find hidden depths in them is something I'm very passionate about! My Aegon girlie mutuals and me will be feasting come season 2 🙏

[hermionesmoon]

byers hate/lack of media literacy/homophobia within the stranger things fandom:

this is such a braindead take like tell me you can’t understand media literacy without telling me you can can’t understand media literacy

1. the blatant homophobia- do they even know who the target audience of stranger things is for? like if you have such a big issue with gay characters then stranger things isn’t the show for you

2. calling will and johnathan stale and boring/not understanding will being gay IS a big part of the story- this is actually so insane it’s like these people watch the show with their eyes closed. when johnathan found out about the demagorgan in season 1 he immediately tried to find it to kill it with nancy they came up with a whole plan to capture it at only 16/17 years old. as for will i’m genuinely so mad cause there’s no way. without will there wouldn’t be a stranger things, will MAKES the show in season 1 he went missing and everything revolved around finding him, in season 2 the mind flyer was in him and most of the plot yet again was revolves around him, now in season 3 he did have less of a story which i dislike BUT it did show how he was STILL connected to the mind flayer and could warn everyone when he was near the season also showed how wills childhood was took away from him and how he wanted nothing more but than to have it back also it showed will and mikes friendship changing in season 4 it showed will growing up and realizing he can’t change that he’s gay and he has to learn to except it (which is definitely why the commenter is mad cause they don’t like gay characters obviously), it showed how good a a brother johnathan is the will and how their bond also strengthened, and when they went back to hawkins it tells us that will is STILL connected to vecna which will obviously play a big part in season 5. and i know i said i wasn’t gonna go too much into byler but if we’re being serious byler is literally such a big part in the show in season 1 they wouldn’t have found el if mike didn’t want to go look for will, in season 2 mike stayed by wills side and showed them growing closer, in season 3 we saw a change in mike and wills friendship it seemed like mike was pushing will away for some reason after being best friends since they were 5 then he randomly brought up will not liking girls why would he ever have that thought?? in season 4 we watch mike come to california acting weird and very distant with will to the point where he just started ignoring him for the most part hmm i wonder why??? also he brought up AGAIN about him and will only being friends when will never said otherwise and after that we just see them getting closer and closer while mileven crumbled.

3. saying all will wants to do is play dnd- oh i wonder why.. maybe because at the young age of 12 he had his whole life change in only one night and was trapped in another dimension for a week WHILE BEING HUNTED,HUNGRY,COLD,AND TIRED. in season 2 he was only 13 but was still traumatized about what happened to him on top of still being connected to the upside down and literally living inbetween worlds while also having to deal with bullying then gets possessed and in season 3 he’s 14 the summer finally came and it seems like everything is back to normal so will just wants his childhood back and to play the game he loves with his friends and you’re really gonna get mad over it??

4. johnathan is annoying but shipping stancy- that’s more of an opinion but it’s still not true and simply weird cause johnathan might be annoying to you but he still loves nancy and treats her right unlike steve did (not hating on steve just being realistic) in season 1 steve was just trash and let his friends call nancy a derogatory word in season 2 steve didn’t care that nancy’s best friend had died and wasn’t there for her the way she needed and in season 4 steve was being weird to nancy even tho she had a boyfriend telling her he wants to have 6 kids with her??? like come on now

5.hopes will comes out and everyone forgets about it cause it’s not relevant- this is actually the most insane thing i talked about this in number 2 but i’m gonna talk about how many stranger things fans are homophobic like how the hell- stranger things was created for the freaks/geeks/and oppressed they already have 2 confirmed gay characters and even more queer-coded characters. there’s so many relationships in the show but you’re mad about a boy being gay when it hasn’t even been verbally said in the show while all the other characters in straight relationships are shown all the time when it’s “not relevant” also i noticed how they didn’t say anything about ronin being a lesbian even tho she’s the only one that has come out.. so the person is probably another weirdo who fetishizes lesbians while hating gay men.

can’t wait for them to watch season 5 where most of the season will and mike are together and start dating and hopefully jancy fully comes back together and is endgame

also why do these people act like characters have to be doing something every second for them to be good characters? just because these ppl can’t use context clues and aren’t understanding doesn’t mean certain characters are “stale”

[weirdo-fream]

stop kel mischaracterization!!

kel is NOT all silliness and no trauma, but he's not the exact opposite either. watering him down to a "fake smile" character takes away from just as much of his writing as it does to water him down to a "free therapy" character. i see people all the time talking about how annoying it is that people mischaracterize him to the point that other people think he has no trauma, and to prove their point, they say he's secretly super depressed and hides his emotions. but that is also mischaracterizing him!! and at this point, there are SO MANY more people who think he hides all of his emotions than people who think he's not traumatized so there's really no more point in saying it. for the sake of you guys that lack the media literacy to figure him out yourself, i'm going to be explaining my take on kel's character.

i'm going to start with kel's reaction to mari's death, and along with that, the emotion chart. at this point, most people know that the emotions the characters represent are the emotions they felt in response to mari's death. yes, kel represents happy in the emotion chart. no, he was not happy BECAUSE she died. although i've only seen like 2 people say they didn't like him because of that, and you guys have already really put those people in their place, i feel like. and those people are saying they dislike him because he "didn't care," not because he was happy about it. so i don't think i need to elaborate on that. the rest of this post is elaboration enough :)

but anyways!! kel didn't react with happiness. he coped with happiness. there is a huge difference. a lot of people think kel hides all his emotions so he can be there for his friends, and while i don't like this conclusion because it waters his character down to a "fake smile" guy (like i said earlier), i do think there is some truth in these words. hell, he probably DID hide his emotions. when mari just died, everyone was so sad. including kel. he didn't fully understand the situation. he was only 13. and i say 13, not 12, because his birthday was literally only weeks after mari died. he knew that someone needed to be there to support his friends, though. with mari dead and hero too depressed to even get out of bed some days, who would be there for everyone if not kel? since he was just a kid, he thought it would be better off one-sided. his friends can cry onto his shoulder while not even having to worry about what he feels.

well clearly that wasn't working. hero was still depressed. sunny still won't leave his house. aubrey and basil are... well... something bad definitely happened between them. kel just doesn't know what. and while he kept trying to talk to hero, and while he was still knocking on sunny's door every day, he didn't do anything more out of fear of making things worse. he didn't even try to figure out what was going on between aubrey and basil out of fear of making things worse. he even says that in sunny's backyard, on one day left, when aubrey is talking about why she started bullying basil (although i don't have a picture of that, you guys are gonna have to trust me on this..).

because hiding his emotions just to be there for his friends wasn't working, he didn't keep doing it for four years. he might have a habit of not fully opening up to people but to nowhere near the extent you guys say he does. instead of trying something else to help his friends, he avoided the problem entirely. he didn't want to make things worse than they already were, yes, but he was probably also a pretty sad 13 year old. and he doesn't like that. he wants to move on from mari's death because, like most people, he doesn't like it when he's sad, especially when the sadness gets dragged out the way it does when something traumatic happens (ex: finding your childhood best friend hanging in your other childhood best friend's backyard). he also didn't want his friends to be sad, but he tried his best to help them, and nothing was working. his relationship with both aubrey and basil slowly died out; his relationship with aubrey probably ending faster because kel would be angry at her for bullying basil. he still knocked on sunny's door every day. but then he only knocked every other day. and then only once a week. and eventually, he wouldn't knock on his door again until years later, when he notices the "FOR SALE" sign in front of the house. he did keep trying for hero. and soon he did help hero get better, though not by helping him get over mari's death, but instead by letting him make him cry.

kel stopped trying to be there for his friends because they weren't letting him. of course, he would support them if they went up to him, but what's the point of offering yourself as a guide, when nobody in the tunnel of grief even considered using one? when the guide himself doesn't know how to navigate through the tunnel yet? he was already a fan of basketball, but he became a hell of a lot more focused on it after mari's passing. he didn't want to be sad. being sad sucks. besides, if he's not sad anymore, he could go back to offer support to his friends, because he wouldn't be too busy dealing with his own grief!! but that never happened. instead, he just made new friends playing sports. but making these new friends and spending so much time basketball was good for him!! basketball helped kel move on, and while he probably still has trouble opening up to people, he's able to heal.

and then eventually, he knocked on sunny's door again. he wanted to see him one last time before he moved... and sunny actually answered! aubrey mentions multiple times that neither kel nor sunny were doing anything about her situation until now. which implies that sunny leaving his house for the first time in four years made kel so happy that he just went and fixed the friend group! and realistically, that makes sense. kel saved sunny. he got him to leave his house after four years of isolation, which is crazy! seeing his friend that he hasn't even had the opportunity to see in so many years is already exciting enough. but kel is the one who brought sunny outside, so kel is the one that helped him, which is even more motivating. kel being able to help sunny leave his house made him believe he could save anyone if he really tried. so he did try. he tried to finally resolve whatever happened between aubrey and basil, after being scared of making their relationship worse and it eventually just not being his place anymore for years. sunny gave kel hope.

all that above was just how he COPED with mari's death, though. another factor to consider is the graveyard scene, when kel tells sunny about when hero yelled at him, and made him cry. when he's done, he does say that he never told anyone that before, which does imply that he hides emotions. but again, not to the extent some people say he does. if he hid his emotions to that extent, he wouldn't even tell sunny about that night. i think it's more of a habit from when he 13. another thing about the graveyard scene is the night hero actually snapped. mari's death was only a few weeks before kel's birthday, causing everyone to miss it. that is canon. kel said that this night was a little more than a year after mari died. meaning it was probably even closer to kel's birthday than mari's death!! if finding his childhood best friend's hanging body in the tree just weeks before he turned 13 didn't ruin birthdays for him, then this night takes the cake (no pun intended).

kel mentions that his parents came upstairs to see what was going on, and immediately comforted hero. but they ignored kel. this does NOT MEAN HIS PARENTS ARE ABUSIVE OR NEGLECTFUL!!! god it angers me so much when people portray their parents as such... there is a level of favoritism, and favoritism can be hurtful to the one that's not favored, but it is not the same thing as child abuse. and his parents favoring hero probably did hurt kel!! he probably had a few insecurities stem from that!! but it was not abuse!! if you want to see what a character is like while dealing with both the trauma of abusive/neglectful parents AND a dead friend, aubrey is right there!!

and that's all i really have to say about kel (no its not)!! i hope you get what i'm trying to say; i think i explained it pretty well for someone who never knows what words to say when the time comes to explain something. you may have noticed that i insisted that calling kel depressed and saying he hides his feelings is mischaracterization, but i proceeded to say that he did hide his feelings and still has trouble opening up to people... the point isn't supposed to be that kel doesn't hide his feelings, it's supposed to be that he's not just super depressed underneath and there's way more to his character than that. also sorry about the bad quality pictures, i took them of my switch :3

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

Oh my! A Kataang shipper (I’m assuming based on the few posts of yours I’ve read) who doesn’t hate on Zuko or Zuko/Katara to raise up their own ship!? Not possible! Seriously though, I’m very glad to find your blog, it’s a very refreshing change of pace. People can ship what they want to but some in this fandom (most, and it’s very concerning) love to go feral for their own ships and destroy anyone who doesn’t agree. And why does most of that have to involve crapping on the twelve-year-old pacifist who survived a genocide!?

I never really watched ATLA much when I was younger but I’m watching it properly from start to finish now and I’m trying to enjoy it, but I keep finding horrendous takes on tumblr that bring me down. I finished the Southern Raiders episode earlier and wanted to come talk about it with fellow fans here, but I think I’ll just stick to enjoying the show by myself because the way so many people are using this episode to prove how bad Aang is makes me uncomfortable. Everyone using TSR to boost Zuko and Katara are missing the point. This isn’t a Zuko and Katara episode, this episode is a Katara episode. Aang isn’t the villain here getting in the way of what’s right. He was raised by monks.

The best way I can think to illustrate this point is (and please bear with me because I’m not sure I’m going to articulate this right) someone afraid of snow. Imagine your whole life you’ve been raised to avoid snow. There’s nothing wrong with snow by itself, but you’re repeatedly told to avoid it and that it’s bad and harmful so you grow up fearing snow. Now one day one of your closest friends wants to go play in the snow and your first instinct is to firmly warn them away from it because that’s what you’ve been told growing up. They’re really insistent on playing in the snow and you realise you can’t stop them and it’s not really your place to so you just try to advise them against anything too crazy. As if that wasn’t bad enough, one of your other friends is actively encouraging playing in the snow and mocking you for your fear of it. That’s how I see the Katara-Zuko-Aang interactions of this episode. Aang is the person raised to fear snow (in this case, violence and killing), Katara is the one who wants to play in the snow (in this case, getting justice for her mother) and Zuko is encouraging it. When Aang confronts her, he’s not upset at what she’s doing, he’s upset because she was going to steal Appa from him and not tell anyone where she was going, which I think is pretty fair given that they’ve already lost Appa once and Aang wasn’t there to stop it.

Sorry, I didn’t mean for this to get so long or out-of-hand. I just got excited to talk to someone with common sense in this fandom and started rambling!

hello friend!! im honored you find my blog to be an island of tranquility amidst the turbulent ocean of the atla fandom 💛

i completely understand your desire to restrict your enjoyment of atla to yourself and your close circle, as there are indeed far too many people on tumblr who take "fandom" to the farthest extremes of harassment and abuse, issues the atla fandom are (unfortunately) particularly rife with. so many anti-aang people love to be loud, proud, and violent about their lack of media literacy... 💀

im also glad you enjoy my posts about tsr!! i fully agree, tsr is a katara episode, and to in any way decenter her perspectives and experiences is to fundamentally misunderstand the ep. (people who interpret tsr as a ship episode, or worse, as an episode in which aang is a villain, are either willingly ignorant or have been deeply failed by the educational system. critical thinking is a tool!! we must exercise it to keep it sharp!!)

i also think your analogy of snow is apt to describe the triangulation of tsr! i might revise it slightly to suggest that aang is not necessarily "afraid" of snow (violence/murder) but more so that he has been raised to be wary of the detrimental consequences that violence, and especially murder, can have on both those who impart and those who witness this bloodshed. i fully agree, tho, that aang is by no means upset at katara for wanting to pursue her vengeance -- he's simply reminding her that she has a choice (after all, allowing her to take appa on this journey represents the ultimate trust aang has in katara's decisions, whether she chose violence or no, bc you're so right that aang is sending appa off with her not so long after appa's devastating disappearance!! that's how much he faith he has in katara to make the decision that is right for her!!)

no need to apologize for rambling in my inbox 💛 tsr is one of my favorite eps in the series, i love getting to talk about it!

[ripplestitchskein]

Heey I really like your Stolitz and Helluva Boss Takes! They are very insightful and interesting to read. Your circus theory is adorable :)

I’m wondering, why do you think this fandom in particular is… so rabidly against media literacy. I too am an old trooper from the Destiel days and I remember the days when internet fans would beg for more complex characters that have grey morality. Also when people would BEG for gay representation like this. I’m so confused man. The “vivziepop critical” hashtag just makes me depressed. So many people seem obsessed to criticize this show and I don’t get it. I haven’t seen this much hate since Twilight. Also did the mistake of checking twitter… Also, why do people act like one person did everything when animation is a highly collaborative medium and there are 100+ creator names at the end of each episode? I’m so confused because I’ve enjoyed the show so much and went online to find fanart and fanfics and found… insane levels of hate and projection?? Why does everyone and their dog want to cancel this woman for making an animated TV show with millenial style sensibilities? Why are they saying the writing is horrible and atrocious when I personally think it’s better than Family Guy, Big Mouth, American Dad and many other adult animation show’s writings? I’m so curious because I’m from Eastern Europe and it feels like something particular about american culture doesn’t click to me in all of this…

Thank you so much Nonnie! If nothing else I might illustrate Blitzo’s little circus with everyone in their roles. I’m working on a Stolitz piece I am VERY excited about but maybe after that.

As far as your question. Whooboy is that a question I have both given a lot of thought to and found no real satisfactory answers, but I have some ideas.

I think it’s a mix of things and I think a huge part of it is the medium and the accessibility of the creators combined with the show reaching a huge internet audience other fandoms don’t really normally touch.

The audience numbers for both of the Spindlehorse/Vivziepop properties are ENORMOUS. On the main channel alone an episode will reach 20+ million views. This doesn’t include other channels that take the same episodes and put them on their channels and reach several million as well. The Nielsen numbers average around the 18-20 per episode but Nielsen ratings are a flawed metric especially with internet based media. We’ve seen some of the Amazon numbers as well and they are insane.

We also live in a time where people are under an extreme amount of scrutiny all hours of the day, the likes of which we really don’t have a comparison for in human history and we have a independent creator who was largely available to that fandom for a long period of time. A lot of media properties are corporate, are sanitized and managed by large PR firms. I think VivziePop said some things before she had fully grown and developed as a person that people latched onto as a core belief system, something the internet is really good at. There also isn’t a lot of grace given to people who change their views after taking in other viewpoints and information. If you say something it will live on in infamy and I think some of the hate stems from that.

I went into it a little in this post here that I just don’t think people are aware of the creative process that goes into making such a thing. An indie creator has to be way more transparent than a corporate entity to get the funding they need and that transparency builds expectations with people who can’t grasp that plots and characters change as the story actually develops. They are very used to prepackaged, sanitized and complete productions and this messy and chaotic realtime creative process is very foreign to them.

Critical thinking skills are also a precious resource in humanity in general, and when you’re dealing with a fandom this large you have more people who lack those skills than normal. These two shows do not spoon feed their audience, a lot of things are in the details and hidden under character complexities and I genuinely believe that they aren’t used to not being told flat out “this is what is happening. This is how the characters feel about it.” By the media they consume. We’re also dealing with two different shows with similar visual elements and comparisons are made between the two while ignoring the actual shows themselves. A great example is the chains in Hazbin for Angel and Husk being compared to the chain in the drug hallucinations in D.H.O.R.K.S. They are not remotely the same, or for the same reason but because they are visually similar, being from the same team people really thought they were on to something while ignoring the actual content and dialogue of the scene itself. Meme culture used for wrong imo.

Having characters that do “problematic” things, say “problematic” things and behave in realistic and nuanced ways is hard for people to separate from the creators or the fans. Any whiff of perceived “toxicity” is jumped on like rabid dogs. They believe it’s a reflection of what the creator and fans actually WANT in real life. It’s purity culture run amuck and it’s a HUGE issue. Like actual fascism in action and it’s extremely concerning to me but what can I do but continue to engage critically with what I like and provide analysis while enjoying it?

There is also this sense of competition in fandoms. My ship is less problematic than yours. My blorbo is a better person. Etc. It’s the silliest shit.

There is also a huge wait time between episodes. In a binge watching culture, or a serialized tv culture where seasons are completed and then released all at once or on a regular schedule with maybe a week or two between it is hard for the audience to retain what they saw previously and connect it. They also build up expectations and have months to sit with them only to be disappointed when it doesn’t play out how they wanted. The Sherlock fandom was notorious for this. The years long gap between seasons let things fester and rot and now we have a show like HB that will go months between episodes and take years to tell a story.

Being completely honest almost all the criticism I’ve seen is not rooted in actual problems with the show but people saying “if they had done X and X and X it would have be a better show” but because the show didn’t deliver what they specifically wanted it’s “not good”. Or they don’t realize it is delivering that, just at a very slow pace.

I think it can best be summed up by a lot of the internet are what me and my partner call “baby brained”. I don’t mean to be dismissive of real criticisms but I haven’t seen any that hold water yet that aren’t rooted in the things I’ve mentioned above. If I’m presented some I’ll engage with them logically and will use the text to determine their validity.

I have more thoughts on this but this is already pretty long so I’ll save it for specific posts on this subject. But like I always say, just block them and do things that make you happy with the things you love. You don’t owe them your time or your attention and the creators don’t owe them anything either.

[myimaginarywonderland]

I love to read. I love stories.

I love books, games, movies, shows, anything that builds a genuine world, gives living characters, adds normal interactions etc.

So it always seemed obvious to me that as someone like that I would end up in fandoms and stuff like BookTok.

And I truly have to talk negatively about things because it hurts to sometimes admit flaws but as a storylover the last years of movies, TV Shows, books etc. have really started to feel so lack luster.

I could write essays about how storytelling, worldbuilding has become one of the lowest priorities when many projects nowadays start but I think there is also something to be said about the Fast Fashionisation of media because I am a victim of it just as I am a victim of brand buying sometimes.

The Fast Fashionisation of media is not only truly damaging stories in a lot of ways but I think people ignore how much off an effect all forms off media have on anyone, no matter their age but especially children.

Because I am someone of the "I learned languages through media" person and I feel like so much off the lose of knowledge, reduction of literacy, lose of interested in science etc. can be tracked directly back to the way media (most industries) have become a Fast Fashion brand and are essentially also using names.

What do I mean by this? We are getting movie after movie from big studies that seem like they have less and less effort put into them, baiting us by being part of x-franchise or in y-universe with z-big actor. Why do I hate this? Because a lot of movie feel like they aren't a story that is told but rather that one of these 3 bait factors was used to build a story around it. The story in itself is never a main focus of the movie, the worldbuilding is lacking because it is just expected that if it's x or y you will already know that "world" and if it's actor-bait, they just hope you are too busy ogling an actor (this isn't meant to shame because we all do sometimes!) to realise the complete lack of genuine story that is most movies.

When it comes to shows there is literally the Formula. Be a remake, a spinoff to some character, connect to some event of x-movie in y-universe, fit into the current in-categorie. Be based on some other past form of media, another season of some old show and that's it. I know people talk a lot about the homophobia because so many queer shows get cancelled but you will notice with these shows is that they don't fit into the "typical" TV Show formula and are actually trying something new so they will already be expected to be received worse and then if they don't at least met those expectations it's immediately over.

Booktok and smut/fanfiction has truly ruined the industry because 90% of books that will be promoted will just be promoted for sex scenes and romance when there is no substance in the entire story. You will have people throwing out this title and that and yet all the books are basically carbon copies with just slightly different featured main characters.

I think Games are the best of media genre right now because the scale of the others has not been reached yet. But I can already say, there is a noticeable bait with big franchise and remakes that will essentially be a carbon copy of the game before with genuinely no new features. I was so disappointed in Pokémon when I got my Switch because I adored Sword but hated the stupid Diamond remake. (Personal I know.) But I also think the gaming community is by far the biggest one influenced by fans which is why there is still many great stories out there. I think the main problem here is also that there isn't the promotion there used to be? Sure big Games from large companies will get ads but in my opinion many games used to rely on Let's Plays for attention especially from "bigger" creators. Since many creators have aged though and shifted their interests + are not uploading as frequently as before, there is less exposure to smaller games that are storybased and not mainstream.

I just think people don't understand the full effect this genuine fast fashion media will have on the population but especially the development of children and I could talk about this all day but yeah, I am going to cut myself off here to stop rambling.

[liciatalks]

I'm seeing the conversation of shows having shorter seasons. Where old series would have 16-20 episode seasons, 8 episodes seem to be the standard now. Series are missing "Filler" episodes.

SIDE NOTE: Western media never had "filter" episodes. Filler episodes is a term originating around anime, where animes based off of mangas would catch up to the current story line and would have to produce episodes to buffer the time. Think vamping during live shows, noise until the next band or act is ready.

There is a server lack of non plot driven episodes.

Some series do not need them, they are written in a way where that the audience has all the information they need. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to know the complete backstory of every single character. Some things can and should be left up to the imagination.

'The Last of Us' is a great example of this. We connected to the characters and story with zero "Filler" episodes. Every episode was too push the plot forward.

Controversialy, Hazbin Hotel also did not need these episodes. It is structured like a Broadway musical so it's storytelling reflected that. You don't just stop the story of a play to have two characters have date night unless that moved the plot forward.

Other series would benefit from these episodes. As much as I love 'The Mandalorian' and 'Loki', both series would benefit with longer seasons. Choices and moments felt rush and you either didn't connect to characters or they felt really out of character.

The reason for shorter seasons could come down to several things.

Networks/Streaming services will only pay for 8-10 episodes

Show creators, fearing cancellation, condensed their stories down

Audience comprehension of media literacy

I believe in some article it was revealed that Netflix has technical specifications for every single one of their shows down to what cameras can be used. So it's not out of the realm of possibilities that networks/streaming services would limit how many episodes you could write. With limited episodes come with limited storytelling, You now have to figure out which pieces are important and which pieces you can leave out.

Series are also getting canceled in shelved almost everyday on these platforms. So creators knowing this try to squeeze as much as they can in a small format thinking it's better to tell any story whether it's good or bad. Just hoping they can make it to a second season to "fix" things.

MEDIA LITERACY. There is a growing number of audiences that if something is more complex than a saltine cracker it confuses the everliving fuck out of them.

Villains must be villainous in heroes must be heroic. Do not make my villain have a sympathetic moment. The hero can't be seen as an asshole they're the hero. The plot isn't going in a straightforward line, confusion. Why are they on this side quest this has nothing to do with the main mission, even though later on it will. How Am I supposed to know those characters are together, they haven't had sex or kissed !?

And if audience are reviewing something bad because they couldn't understand it networks/streaming services are going to shift gears to reflect that. Meaning complex in slow burning stories are out the window. They want simple fast pace easily consumable shows.

Until networks/streaming services stop thinking only of money, and show respect for those creating their series AND audiences start comprehending things above a first grade reading level we're not going to see any changes.

Networks/streaming services make money off of these series and they're just consumable enough to get people talking about it.

If you're wanting complex long form series your best bet is going to be indie project and companies. Those who are in it for the art.

[writerben01]

Anon hate, Part 2

This morning I woke up to a bad comment without substance. I obviously deleted it. It’s not useful to respond to anonymous comments and the writer of them will not even see the response. But the annoying thing about anon hate is that it does make me want to respond. So let me just respond to the parts that jumped out to me here, for catharsis and entertainment.

For context, this is about my guilty pleasure fanfic Konoha Celestial Forge (KCF), which is a writing challenge where the main character randomly gets additional powers after I’ve written an x amount of words.

    […] this fic would be much more interesting if it were a SI instead of an OC.

I’m flattered you think I’m so interesting.

But really, the hubris to come into the comment section and complain about the basic premise and genre of the story. Hey Stephen King, IT would have been so much more interesting if it was a comedy; you already have the clown and goofy characters.

A self-insert story is characterized by a meta view on the Naruto universe. It’s someone who knows about earth morality and sometimes Naruto canon, using both to fundamentally change the Naruto world. These stories can be fun, but they are not the story I wanted to tell.

I wanted an OC. I wanted someone who was born into Naruto, thinks the Naruto universe is mostly normal, slowly getting introduced to all the alien perspectives that the Celestial Forge powers bring with it. It’s been fun to discover spells and go ‘ah yes, a ninja technique that is slightly strange’. Runic enchantment: ‘Forbidden Seals’. Creating Imps from pure magic: ‘I must have signed a summoning contract’.

As always, if you think a more interesting story could be told by changing the premise, feel free to write it.

I’m always open to suggestions and creative ideas. But you need to start with a ‘yes and’ instead of a ‘no because’.

    Finally…Why is it that authors always have to cripple MCs? There is such a thing a being average. Rather than being the best in his ninja class or an academy dropout incapable of even using chakra, why can’t he just be an average student ?

Urgh, it’s so annoying that we have to follow Goku. Why can’t we watch an average person in Dragon Ball Z? Why do we have to concentrate so much on the Z-fighters?! Why must we follow Naruto, the weakest Academy student, become Hokage? Kiba is far more average. Why couldn’t the series have been about him?

Some people are average, you know?!

The main character of KCF is weak, because he was given a gift of unlimited potential. It’s more interesting (to me) to see the weakest person get stronger than it is to see an average person getting stronger. Writing is often about extremes. Don’t have a single misunderstanding that ruins a date, have a dozen of them. More isn’t always better, but drama does require that we lean into emotions and ideas.

Like, this take is idiotic and reveals a complete lack of media literacy. Are you a child? In that case I’m probably being too mean. But the recent Twitter discourse about Starship Troopers shows that adults are capable of incomprehension of the most basic aspects beyond the obvious.

We can have average people in stories, having average lives and doing average things. Sure. There are great stories that do this. But it’s a trope as old as time to have the stable boy become the hero. To have the peasant become prince. To have Cinderella become the queen. In a story about low to high, let’s start as low as possible.

    It becomes tiresome when so many fics make their MCs the worst ever.

Then avoid them.

Are you trapped somewhere being forced to read tiresome fanfics in the same vein as Mystery Science Theater 3000? Do you need help? Do we need to call the police for you?

    I mean, this MC was getting tired doing normal chores. He sounds like he has less physical capability than humans in our world much less humans in Naruto.

He is a twelve year old that is spending his days doing heavy physical labour. He is tired because he’s pushing his body to its limits without breaks, knowing that anything else will leave him broke and then dead. So yes, when he’s doing chores he is spending energy he doesn’t have.

Like, obviously.

How much clearer do I have to be that he is in a bad position? That this is a symptom of a broken society where there is no recourse for disinherited children but to sell themselves into minimum-wage servitude? That he is mostly treated like an adult even though he has the body of a 12 year old? When we meet his boss, we find out he’s a kind man that is using these jobs to keep kids from being in a worse position. That implies he wouldn’t mind if Ginyoku slowed down enough that his body could handle it. The boss is not the one forcing this on the main character, but the main character’s pride is making him feel like a failure because he isn’t as productive as any of the adults.

Have you met any 12 year olds in our universe working for 60 hours a week in construction? Because that’s the comparison you ought to make. Do you think they’re a bundle of energy when they get home?

Even if he’s unable to use chakra (like Lee), humans in that world are superhuman. They naturally recover and can do much more than baseline humans.

I consider myself an avid Naruto fan, but I have never seen this presented as fact. We see that ninja can survive things that others can’t, recover more quickly and are generally stronger than could normally be expected. But we never see normal civilians exhibit any of these traits. Lee can’t shape chakra, but he seems to harness the chakra anyway to become a great martial artist. That is part of why releasing the 8 gates (and the chakra that comes with it) make Lee stronger. And only that after someone shows him how to train like that.

My main character starts out much more like a civilian than a ninja like Lee. Not just incapable of shaping chakra, but also incapable of directing it to strengthen his punches or make his body more durable. I am comfortable with the interpretation of the Naruto universe that civilians aren’t any more sturdy than anyone else.

And if you’re not? Tough titties.

    It just felt like pointless nerfing to me. What’s next? He’s going to lose an arm and an eye? And forced to create bionic parts?

Gasp! Imagine a character in Naruto losing an eye.

Imagine characters in Naruto losing their arms.

This is the kind of moment where I wasn’t planning on making my main character lose a limb, but boy am I tempted now out of sheer spite.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the kind of story where a ninja called ‘Anon’ slices off his arm, after which we’ll spend a full arch trying to get revenge with many monologues about the evils of the Anon responsible for making the main character armless, until we finally find Anon kidnapped in a spaceship forced to read through horribly competent fiction that goes right over their head.

Kinda wish it was now, though. Maybe for an Omake.

Closing:

This fanfic is based on Brockton’s Celestial Forge, which is a 2 million word slow-burn (still ongoing). I don’t know how far I’ll get in writing this. I have 85k words at the moment. But I do know that to keep this experience fun, and to achieve the maximum potential of a strengthening protagonist, we need to wallow in his current weakness.

There is a fight with a chuunin coming. The main character won’t stand a chance.

These scenes are needed, so that we can compare and contrast when later in the story he is making mince meat of jounin.

I feel like this makes a good story. And if you’re going to go into my comment section to lecture about what I should have done to make a good story, at the very least include some argumentation and proper analysis instead of just a rant about a current trend you don’t like. Maybe next time I won’t have to delete your comment and I can just respond to it in civil conversation.

[notfebruary]

I sure have all sorts of nuanced opinions on the current state of media literacy among humanity's population that I'm just... way too tired to even try to talk about at length.

It's such a complicated problem that has roots in so many different topics which might not even appear related at first glance.

I wouldn't even know where to begin trying to explain all of my thoughts on the current "media literacy crisis" to anyone, and I'm definitely not an expert in any one of the topics involved.

And I'm definitely not enough of an expert to even try to tell other people what they should or should not think about it.

So instead, I'll ask some questions. Questions about arbitrary things that I still haven't quite found the answer to yet which spring to mind when the words 'media literacy crisis' cross my mind.

Why not look consider the way that technology is evolving faster than underfunded and gutted school systems can keep up teaching people about them, and how these systems are structured around a lifestyle from more than half a century ago which has changed drastically since then?

Just look at how many people in recent generations don't know how to perform basic tasks like cooking, cleaning, or doing basic taxes because they were just... never taught how to do them or why they're important.

Remember when there used to be a whole mandatory class that taught that stuff to people in high school called Home Economics? I sure don't, because it was long gone by the time I was even old enough to take the class!

There is an alarmingly small number of people in society who actually know how to competently use anything other than a smart device, and fewer who can actually repair and modify them(if they're even allowed to by law).

There's also a huge amount of people who inhabit online spaces that don't know how to protect themselves from those who might seek to harm them. Even if they don't readily give out their personal information(as many actually do), corporations have been allowed to gleefully scrape information about them from posts by their unwitting parents or even themselves - all for the purpose of getting them to spend money.

Why aren't these kinds of things being taught in an accessible manner? Is it a deliberate effort to make people less learned and more reliant on corporate products, or is it a mere side effect of individual cases of nepotism or wanting to spend more money on other things like military funding?

Why is military might considered so much more important to fund than public knowledge?

What about the slippery slope of censorship? Particularly, the kind which is ostensibly in place to protect certain groups of people(often children) but in practice is actually used as an excuse to silence and scrub the existence of minority groups from public exposure?

Pretending that someone doesn't exist doesn't make them go away.

It may, in fact, make it easier for people who are actually abusing others to get away with it by pointing at a scapegoat.

If no one knows enough about the scapegoat in question to object to the accuser's claims, then why wouldn't they choose to believe that this other group of people they know so little about will do these atrocious things?

It's much easier to think of abusers and exploiters as an unknowable and inherently immoral 'outsider' than it is to think of them as the family members, friends, and community members that they so often end up being.

How about the notable lack of standardized learning available for topics related to emotional intelligence?

Like, why do so many people not know how to treat other people like human beings and manage their own emotional problems until they have the money to go talk to a therapist or counselor? That kind of information should be way more widespread than it is.

We're getting there, but frankly... we still ain't there yet as a whole.

How do you know who you should trust, and when you should forgive someone who's wronged you or screwed up in the past? When do you stop handing out second chances, and to who?

If someone's had a storied and well-known history as a liar and a con man, and they say they're turning over a new leaf and mean well, at what point is it reasonable to take them at their word? How do you tell?

How can you tell if someone you've been told terrible things about your whole life is actually as terrible as you've been told? Should you trust what other people have said about them, or judge them based on your own experiences? At what point is it reasonable to put yourself at risk out of compassion, and at what point is it cruel to shut someone out for making genuine mistakes and wanting to do better?

And at what point should a mistake never be forgiven by others? What do you do if someone never actually made that mistake, but because someone else said they did, they suffer for it?

There's just... so much to think about.

There are so many things which just can't be adequately solved by an easy answer. Not without approaching dangerous levels of ignorance - the kind of ignorance that allow someone to commit atrocities against other human beings, because they don't see them as other human beings at all.

At what point do you draw the line?

Who deserves to exist and who doesn't?

What kind of content should be allowed to exist and what shouldn't?

How do you stop that kind of thing you don't think should exist from existing at all without impacting other groups unintentionally in the process?

If something bad exists, does pretending it isn't there and removing it from the public eye actually do anything to reduce it from causing harm?

Or will it just reduce victims of abhorrent crimes to suffering in silence as everyone around them pretends the people hurting them don't even exist?

I wish there was a simple answer to all of these complicated things. But then again, people are not simple creatures.

[jennifersminds]

Hey! Hope you are having a great day.

So since I like you opinions and analyzes so much, I wanted to ask, Why do you think people hate Elena?

I know they have some reasons, like her sleeping with Damon and breaking up with Stefan etc... (Which I find terribly hypocritical because no other character is better at that point) but it's like they think Elena was ALWAYS a bad friend or a girlfriend, they ignore the times she sacrificed herself and asked forgiveness from Stefan. Honestly, I've left apps like Reddit or Instagram because of that, I can't stand all this hatred towards a fictional character who has so many fans as well.

Okay I'm gonna start off with - tysm !!! for this ask and I'm so sorry for the tremendous can of mental worms it's going to pop off bc i have thoughts-

There are actually alot of factors in play when it comes to the frankly insane amount of hate Elena receives, and in my opinion they vary between vaguely valid and batshit insane. Now this could very easily turn into an insane rant so I’m gonna try to speak objectively in an attempt to actually explain myself lmao.

The cards are already sorta stacked against Elena as a main character because audiences seem to have this individualistic desire to tear a piece of medias protagonist apart (especially if they’re female). I honestly can’t think of a fandom I’ve been in nor witnessed one where this doesn’t happen to some degree. Media literacy is a dying skill and alot of audience member struggle to grasp that the ‘fun, witty, sexy, bitchy etc’ side character is often a side character for a reason. Main characters are viewed as ‘attention hoggers’ for merely taking up the most screen time as if thats not what they were always intended to do. No matter how snarky or chill a character is people will always get tired of them for wining or crying or taking up too much room. Regardless of a piece of medias contents, audiences have a very short fuse with this sorta thing. So Elena not only being a main character, but a main character who’s literally the centre of multiple spells/prophecies and who is constantly undergoing horrific trauma because of this and therefore crying, makes her an unfortunate target for contrarian viewers who are already desperate to hate the shows lead just to feel different.

The biggest factor is, to likely no-ones surprise, misogyny. Both internalised and not, the shows 12-17 year old target audience combined with the actual blatant sexism displayed in the show itself are a recipe for disaster that implodes with every new wave of tweens that stumble across the show. Now I mentioned how alot of audiences hate main characters out of a need to feel different, amplify that by a hundred thanks to the fun and unavoidable ‘not like other girls’ phase that most of this age demographic is going through and you’ve got yourself an Elena-anti. (I’m not demonising this phase, the treatment of young girls in society makes this an almost impossible thing to avoid, however it is a big reason alot of girls hate Elena). The nature of the show adds to this aswell, as the Salvatore love triangle encourages audiences to pick a side, Stefan or Damon, and once you start choosing between brothers you feel the need to choose between every character. So you’ve got girls who like Caroline feeling a need to hate both Elena and Bonnie because the show makes it feel impossible to like more than one character at once. 

Now, building more on internalised misogyny- the biggest and most insane way people hate on Elena imo is the ‘crybaby’ accusations. This to me comes from a mixture of point one and two, a lack of patients for main characters and their ‘whining’ and ‘not like other girls’ syndrome. Now we can argue until we’re blue in the face about who lost more or who deserves to cry but in my opinion it doesn’t matter. Elena was grieving at every point in the show (something that I don’t think was properly discussed tbh), being actively groomed and abused (I’ll talk more on that later), and dealing with multiple threats on her life at the age of seventeen. She deserved to cry. In fact she deserved to do alot more.

So I’ve mostly been talking about audience and audience perception so far so let’s get into the actual show and its storyline. Now I mentioned how tvd encourages their audience to choose, this in itself isn't wrong or unusual, however with Elena it leads to the entire audience heavily sympathising with one of the Salvatore brothers. The young girls watching the show are told that they need to feel bad/happy for whichever one they like the most because otherwise why are they watching? Now I know it sounds like I’m just describing to you the basic steps of watching/reading anything however this is a problem here because - 

The Salvatore’s are not victims. They are not just love interests. The Elena/Salvatore love triangle isn’t a normal love triangle where all the parties are equally complicated and therefore deserve to be held equally accountable. Both Damon and Stefan hold a highly significant level of power above Elena. Not just because they’r older but because she is a child. And not just because she’s a child but because they both no more about her and the world she’s being tormented by than she does. This would be one thing if they made an effort to share this information with her along the way but they don’t, and not only do they use this to manipulate her along the way they hold her accountable for what she does while being manipulated by one of them.

Not even the way teenagers would hold each-other accountable in a normal high school love triangle, they hold her to the standards of an adult and because they do- so does the audience. And because the young girls watching this show have no reason to hold their fav hunky sassy sexy vampire boy accountable for how they treat Elena. They then hold Elena accountable for not just the things she does ‘wrong’ but the things the Salvatores fo wrong too.

All of Damon and Stefans misdeeds fall upon Elena, the people they kill/assault (caroline), the battles they start. She is blamed for all of it because, going back to point one, she’s the protagonist, and she’s at the centre of it all. And while it is true that in the lore of the show everything happens because of Elena and her doppelgänger status, she literally never has any control or autonomy throughout the entire run. She doesn’t bring vampires into Mystic falls. The vampires (salvatores) force their way into it just to fuck her. But because the show would have to sacrifice its perfect love story to discuss this, it doesn’t. So it’s primarily young audience (point two) ignores it/doesn’t think of it, and also blames Elena the way the Salvatore’s do. 

Okay I’m gonna wrap this up even though there’s probably alot more I should say but i will give my vague opinions on a few plot points.

Stefan had no right to be mad at Elena in season 4, at-least not the way he was. I mentioned before that Elena was held to the standards of an adult by both brothers well I honestly think Stefan is the worst for it. His whole self afflicting, tortured “I never thought you’d hurt me this way” thing was bullshit because.... why??? why did you think that? She’s a child. A literal child that your psycho rapist of a brother has been trying to fuck for two years now.

The use of Rebekah by both Stefan and Damon is very gross to me aswell. And I think relevant here too because both of these moments are prime “OMG look how self centred Elena is” things. Both Stefan and Damon use sex with other people as a way to punish Elena for stepping out of line. The choice of Rebekah is deliberate by both of them and to say otherwise is ridiculous in my opinion. Damon sleeps with Rebekah not 48 hours after she tried to kill Elena and Stefan after Rebekah literal did kill her. The attitude of the “You’ve never seen me when I’m not in love with you.” shit is enraging.

Anyway, I’m gonna end this here. I’d be happy to elaborate/get into more specific moments and reasons whenever but thank you again for this ask. Sorry it’s a bit late but I wanted to get as much out as coherently as possible lmao.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Recommendation engines and "lean-back" media

In William Gibson’s 1992 novel “Idoru,” a media executive describes her company’s core audience:

“Best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth…no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

It’s an astonishingly great passage, not just for the image it evokes, but for how it captures the character of the speaker and her contempt for the people who made her fortune.

It’s also a beautiful distillation of the 1990s anxiety about TV’s role in a societal “dumbing down,” that had brewed for a long time, at least since the Nixon-JFK televised debates, whose outcome was widely attributed not to JFK’s ideas, but to Nixon’s terrible TV manner.

Neil Postman’s 1985 “Amusing Ourselves To Death” was a watershed here, comparing the soundbitey Reagan-Dukakis debates with the long, rhetorically complex Lincoln-Douglas debates of the previous century.

(Incidentally, when I finally experienced those debates for myself, courtesy of the 2009 BBC America audiobook, I was more surprised by Lincoln’s unequivocal, forceful repudiations of slavery abolition than by the rhetoric’s nuance)

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/20/lincoln-douglas-debate-audiobook-civics-history-and-rhetoric-lesson-in-16-hours/

“Media literacy” scholarship entered the spotlight, and its left flank — epitomized by Chomsky’s 1988 “Manufacturing Consent” — claimed that an increasingly oligarchic media industry was steering society, rather than reflecting it.

Thus, when the internet was demilitarized and the general public started trickling — and then rushing — to use it, there was a widespread hope that we might break free of the tyranny of concentrated, linear programming (in the sense of “what’s on,” and “what it does to you”).

Much of the excitement over Napster wasn’t about getting music for free — it was about the mix-tapification of all music, where your custom playlists would replace the linear album.

Likewise Tivo, whose ad-skipping was ultimately less important than the ability to watch the shows you liked, rather than the shows that were on.

Blogging, too: the promise was that a community of reader-writers could assemble a daily “newsfeed” that reflected their idiosyncratic interests across a variety of sources, surfacing ideas from other places and even other times.

The heady feeling of the time is hard to recall, honestly, but there was a thrill to getting up and reading the news that you chose, listening to a playlist you created, then watching a show you picked.

And while there were those who fretted about the “Daily Me” (what we later came to call the “filter bubble”) the truth was that this kind of active media creation/consumption ranged far more widely than the monopolistic media did.

The real “bubble” wasn’t choosing your own programming — it was everyone turning on their TV on Thursday nights to Friends, Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

The optimism of the era is best summarized in a taxonomy that grouped media into two categories: “lean back” (turn it on and passively consume it) and “lean forward” (steer your media consumption with a series of conscious decisions that explores a vast landscape).

Lean-forward media was intensely sociable: not just because of the distributed conversation that consisted of blog-reblog-reply, but also thanks to user reviews and fannish message-board analysis and recommendations.

I remember the thrill of being in a hotel room years after I’d left my hometown, using Napster to grab rare live recordings of a band I’d grown up seeing in clubs, and striking up a chat with the node’s proprietor that ranged fondly and widely over the shows we’d both seen.

But that sociability was markedly different from the “social” in social media. From the earliest days of Myspace and Facebook, it was clear that this was a sea-change, though it was hard to say exactly what was changing and how.

Around the time Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace, a close friend a blazing argument with a TV executive who insisted that the internet was just a passing fad: that the day would come when all these online kids grew up, got beaten down by work and just wanted to lean back.

To collapse on the sofa and consume media that someone else had programmed for them, anaesthetizing themselves with passive media that didn’t make them think too hard.

This guy was obviously wrong — the internet didn’t disappear — but he was also right about the resurgence of passive, linear media.

But this passive media wasn’t the “must-see TV” of the 80s and 90s.

Rather, it was the passivity of the recommendation algorithm, which created a per-user linear media feed, coupled with mechanisms like “endless scroll” and “autoplay,” that incinerated any trace of an active role for the “consumer” (a very apt term here).

It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I disliked about algorithmic recommendation/autoplay, but I knew I hated it. The reason my 2008 novel LITTLE BROTHER doesn’t have any social media? Wishful thinking. I was hoping it would all die in a fire.

Today, active media is viewed with suspicion, considered synonymous with Qanon-addled boomers who flee Facebook for Parler so they can stan their favorite insurrectionists in peace, freed from the tyranny of the dread shadowban.

But I’m still on team active media. I would rather people actively choose their media diets, in a truly sociable mode of consumption and production, than leaning back and getting fed whatever is served up by the feed.

Today on Wired, Duke public policy scholar Philip M Napoli writes about lean forward and lean back in the context of Trump’s catastrophic failure to launch an independent blog, “From the Desk of Donald J Trump.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-trumps-failed-blog-proves-he-was-just-howling-into-the-void/

In a nutshell, Trump started a blog which he grandiosely characterized as a replacement for the social media monopolists who’d kicked him off their platforms. Within a month, he shut it down.

While Trump claimed the shut-down was all part of the plan, it’s painfully obvious that the real reason was that no one was visiting his website.

Now, there are many possible, non-exclusive explanations for this.

For starters, it was a very bad social media website. It lacked even rudimentary social tools. The Washington Post called it “a primitive one-way loudspeaker,” noting its lack of per-post comments, a decades old commonplace.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/21/trump-online-traffic-plunge/

Trump paid (or more likely, stiffed) a grifter crony to build the site for him, and it shows: the “Like” buttons didn’t do anything, the video-sharing buttons created links to nowhere, etc. From the Desk… was cursed at birth.

But Napoli’s argument is that even if Trump had built a good blog, it would have failed. Trump has a highly motivated cult of tens of millions of people — people who deliberately risked death to follow him, some even ingesting fish-tank cleaner and bleach at his urging.

The fact that these cult-members were willing to risk their lives, but not endure poor web design, says a lot about the nature of the Trump cult, and its relationship to passive media.

The Trump cult is a “push media” cult, simultaneously completely committed to Trump but unwilling to do much to follow him.

That’s the common thread between Fox News (and its successors like OANN) and MAGA Facebook.

And it echoes the despairing testimony of the children of Fox cultists, that their boomer parents consume endless linear TV, turning on Fox from the moment they arise and leaving it on until they fall asleep in front of it (also, reportedly, how Trump spent his presidency).

Napoli says that Trump’s success on monopoly social media platforms and his failure as a blogger reveals the role that algorithmically derived, per-user, endless scroll linear media played in the ascendancy of his views.

It makes me think of that TV exec and his prediction of the internet’s imminent disappearance (which, come to think of it, is not so far off from my own wishful thinking about social media’s disappearance in Little Brother).

He was absolutely right that this century has left so many of us exhausted, wanting nothing more than the numbness of lean-back, linear feeds.

But up against that is another phenomenon: the resurgence of active political movements.

After a 12-month period that saw widescale civil unrest, from last summer’s BLM uprising to the bizarre storming of the capital, you can’t really call this the golden age of passivity.

While Fox and OANN consumption might be the passive daily round of one of Idoru’s “vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organisms craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed,” that is in no way true of Qanon.

Qanon is an active pastime, a form of collaborative storytelling with all the mechanics of the Alternate Reality Games that the lean-forward media advocates who came out of the blogging era love so fiercely:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/06/no-vitiated-air/#other-hon

Meanwhile, the “clicktivism” that progressive cynics decried as useless performance a decade ago has become an active contact sport, welding together global movements from Occupy to BLM that use the digital to organize the highly physical.

That’s the paradox of lean-forward and lean-back: sometimes, the things you learn while leaning back make you lean forward — in fact, they might just get you off the couch altogether.

I think that Napoli is onto something. The fact that Trump’s cultists didn’t follow him to his crummy blog tells us that Trump was an effect, not a cause (something many of us suspected all along, as he’s clearly neither bright nor competent enough to inspire a movement).

But the fact that “cyberspace keeps everting” (to paraphrase “Spook Country,” another William Gibson novel) tells us that passive media consumption isn’t a guarantee of passivity in the rest of your life (and sometimes, it’s a guarantee of the opposite).

And it clarifies the role that social media plays in our discourse — not so much a “radicalizer” as a means to corral likeminded people together without them having to do much. Within those groups are those who are poised for action, or who can be moved to it.

The ease with which these people find one another doesn’t produce a deterministic outcome. Sometimes, the feed satisfies your urge for change (“clicktivism”). Sometimes, it fuels it (“radicalizing”).

Notwithstanding smug media execs, the digital realm equips us to “express our mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire” by doing much more than “changing the channels on a universal remote” — for better and for worse.

Image: Ian Burt (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/267206444

CC BY: https://creativecommo

ns.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[matildainmotion]

Making Waves by Sophie Lovett

Mothers Who Make’s is hosting a series of guest bloggers, to celebrate and give space for the diverse views and voices within our movement. I am delighted to introduce our first of these: please read on for the Question of the Month, as posed by home-educating mother of two, writer and activist, and MWM Hub co-ordinator for Exeter, Sophie Lovett.

Before you read this post I feel that I should apologise: in case you disagree with me, in case what I’ve written is too much, in case it offends you. But this is Mothers Who Make, and we don’t apologise here for showing up as our whole selves, so instead I will take a deep breath and begin.

This has been a tough year. A tough year after a tough decade. One which, on a personal level, has been filled with many moments of joy – but where the weight of the world has pressed ever harder on my shoulders.

We’ve never lived through a pandemic before.

It’s brought out the best in us, and the worst. It’s brought us closer together, and deepened the divisions in values and circumstance that are tearing our society apart. And it has made the priorities of our government - to put profits above people – very, very clear.

This neoliberal agenda has its roots way back in the 20th century, and over the years we have pretty much come to take it for granted. Notions of unrestrained economic growth, wealth which is available to everyone if they just work hard enough, and the promise of freedom which is earnt by playing by the rules of society - alongside a reality of gaping gaps between rich and poor both on a domestic and international level. In many ways the Coronavirus pandemic has provided precisely the kind of crisis that the neoliberal elite love: an overwhelming distraction that they can use to impose more unpopular policies, accusing people of being unpatriotic or even undemocratic if they oppose them.

Yet it has also sowed the seeds of something new. Off the back of years of campaigning from environmental and social justice organisations, many more people are beginning to realise that the future could perhaps look very different. That the planet cannot handle this unfettered capitalism for much longer – and neither, given the explosion in mental health issues even before the challenges inflicted by 2020, can we. That there might be different ways of living that could be more fulfilling for us and our children, whilst at the same time starting to reverse the destruction we have wreaked on the global ecosystem.

And this – this imagining of a different world – is making some people very uncomfortable.

In England, the government released guidance last week which told teachers not to use resources from any organisation which has advocated abolishing capitalism – even if the materials themselves did not express such a view – as it would imply support for an “extreme political stance” on a par with racism and opposition to freedom of speech. Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of a statement which alienates many anti-racism campaigners and seeks to silence the voices of those who might want to legitimately challenge the status quo, this is a sign to me that they know their power is waning. The neoliberal story is coming apart at the seams, and a new narrative is taking shape which could take things in a very different direction.

As actors in that narrative we have a choice to make about the future that we want to see. And as mothers – and especially as mother makers – we hold in our hands a huge amount of power to shape the world our children will grow up into.

It might not always feel that way.

One of the most effective strategies of neoliberal capitalism is to convince us that we are not enough. That we are deficient in a myriad of different ways, and powerless to take control. It makes us the perfect consumers – hungry for the things we can buy to improve ourselves and make life better for us and our families. And if we can’t buy them – if we are part of the huge swathe of the population struggling to even afford the basics we need to live – we are taught that it is our fault, that we’re just not trying hard enough.

In motherhood especially this can lead to a real sense of disempowerment – a lack of trust in ourselves and our ability to provide for our children. There is so much that is marketed to that desire to give our children the very best start in life: elaborate toys, sleep training programmes, gorgeous clothes, endless baby classes. It plays into the competitiveness which fuels the capitalist fire, the fear of being left behind. It sells us baby walkers (and mini trainers) to get those little people up on their feet as soon as we can, electronic learning games for toddlers in the hope that they’ll know their ABCs before they start preschool, tutors to help seven year olds pass their SATs with flying colours. It rushes us back into the workplace before we’re really ready, no matter that our salary barely pays the childcare fees. It tells us that teachers know our children better than we do, that school is the only place they can get an education, and that compliance with authority is the most important lesson they can learn.

None of this is bad in and of itself – if it works for you then that’s awesome. But if it doesn’t, if the treadmill is making you tired and you’re fed up of searching for the next best thing then stop. Breathe. And work out what it is you truly need.

Our role as mothers may be woefully undervalued by the capitalist system, but we do have the power to choose where we focus our energies, to withdraw our consent from expectations that we disagree with, to challenge the assumptions around the status of mothers (and children) in wider society.

We can choose to raise our children with principles we believe in, to communicate messages to them that deviate from those which dominate the mainstream, to be their allies and their advocates instead of colluding in their oppression.  

And, little by little, we can build a kinder, more inclusive world – one where everyone has value.

If as mothers we hold the future of the planet in each act of care we carry out for our children, as mother makers we are doubly powerful in our ability to reach beyond our inner circle and inspire through the particular capacity of art of all kinds to reshape the narrative and reimagine what is possible.

Creatives are uniquely placed to lead the revolution – and this is I believe a significant reason why the UK government shows such disdain and disregard for the arts and creative industries.  

Just as Media Studies is decried as a ‘mickey mouse’ subject because it directly exposes the techniques the government and their allies use to manipulate the opinions of the population, the Arts in schools are sidelined because they nurture exactly the kind of creativity and independent thought that can be used to challenge the status quo.

It starts in the Early Years, when days that should be dedicated to open ended play are instead filled up with increasingly formal literacy and numeracy, and can be seen right through the education system: ten year olds spending whole terms doing nothing but exam preparation, teenagers being told they can’t study the creative subjects they’d prefer because they don’t fill the right assessment bucket. And it continues in the world outside, as the government response to the impact of Covid has shown so starkly.

Our art is important. Our making is important. It holds a mirror up to the present and shows how life could be, it inspires, it sustains – and it can be an escape route from the treadmill our leaders would rather keep us tethered to.

From the stories we tell to the songs we sing to the materials we choose to the business models we adopt to share our work: we are creating the fabric of the future.

And so this month, wherever you are in your mothering and your making, I would invite you to consider these questions: What are the changes you would like to see in the world? How are you making waves in your mothering? And in your making? What changes (small or large) could you make in either to help create the future you dream of for yourself and for your children?

To read more from Sophie go to: www.raisingrevolutionaries.co.uk and https://www.instagram.com/raising_revolutionaries/